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In 1939 Russell Keats, the eldest
son of Australian composer Horace Keats, joined the Royal
Australian Navy and was subsequently posted to the heavy cruiser
HMAS Canberra. Russell Keats served on the Canberra for the next
three years, mostly on convoy patrol, but in 1942, the Canberra
was sent to Savo Island in the pacific to provide assistance to
the Gaudalcanal campaign against the Japanese. During the morning
of August the 9th the Japanese fleet of battle ships
launched a daring and unexpected raid on the allied fleet, during
which HMAS Canberra was critically damaged, and scuttled later
the same morning when she was deemed to be unsalvageable.

Tragically, Russell Keats was
killed during the attack. His father and entire family was
devastated by this event, and Horace Keats composed a very solemn
and reflective song in memory of his son entitled Over the Quiet Waters.

Voice of the
Depthsis composed for
piano, percussion and pre-recorded electronics, and follows the
story of Russell Keats during his deployment on the HMAS
Canberra. Spoken passages of text from the letters sent home to
his family, read by his brother Brennan Keats, outline and
initiate the structural points of the work. The pitches from the
central motif of Over the Quiet Waters form
its harmonic basis, and are used as fundamentals from which other
pitch material is derived from their physical-acoustic
properties.

These physical-acoustic properties
are used to synthesise sounds in the electronic component of the
work, and are re-enforced in the piano and vibraphone parts. A
speaker is also directed into the piano internal mechanism to
agitate the strings creating sympathetic vibrations at various
points. This results in a subtle reverberation effect that blends
with the electronic reverberation and creates deceptive tone
colour transformations.